Tag: reviews

Film Century 1.5

I’d been worried that December would be a crunch, but we’re heading into that final stretch with a strong head of steam and only a couple more movies to thrash.

Dec. 4 Red Cliff – Impossibly luscious but with an odd quality of being not-quite-there, like a cinematic version of Megan Fox. 129/150
Dec. 5 The Nightmare Before Christmas – So what’s St. Patrick’s Town, some kind of green-beer brewery full of belligerent leprechauns? 130/150
Dec. 6 Identity – For all you budding Shyamalans out there, a quick primer on twists: a good twist recontextualizes past events in a way that’s suprising, entertaining, and still makes sense. 131/150
Dec. 7 Four Christmases – American studio filmmaking is based around the fact that the lower you aim, the more likely you are to hit your target. 132/150

Stardust – Cannonball Read #2

Stardust by Neil Gaiman.  Fantasy, Nouveau Fairytale.

Well, I love me some modern takes on the fairy tale and I love me some Neil Gaiman (Sandman is tha bomb!!!!) so this seemed a prefect choice. More tellingly, I love the movie based on this book. I thought I was set up to love this book but it left me lukewarm.

The book follows Tristran Thorn as he leaves the village of Wall on a quest to win his one true love’s heart. He has marvelous adventures in the land of Faerie and, it being a fairy tale, he wins through to his goal! This is all you really need to know before you read this book in terms of plot. Gaiman’s genius for unique characters is in full effect as he populates both Wall and Faerie with memorable personalities and conceptions of magic.

Continue reading Stardust – Cannonball Read #2

Film Century 1.5

Nov. 11 Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto – Having been raised on a steady diet of Shogun and Seven Samurai, I’m gonna go ahead and pretend this is Toshiro Mifune’s autobiography. 118/150
Nov. 12 Bart Got a Room – I tried writing a script for a romantic comedy where the protagonist quickly realizes that his quirky best friend who is not-at-all-secretly in love with him would be a good match and they get together without any antics or confusion, but it turned out to only be 5 minutes long, so we get stuff like this. 119/150
Nov. 13 A Christmas Carol – Startlingly expressive in its quiet moments, it eventually drowns them out with needless roller coaster antics. 120/150
Nov. 15 Ghost World – Where do teenagers get the idea that being a sarcastic, judgmental bitchass makes them more grown up? 121/150
Nov. 17 Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple – Cranks the combat, chivalry, and cinematic misogyny from the first film up to 11. 122/150
Nov. 24 Barbarella – Say what you will about Altamont, but at least it put an end to this sort of thing. 123/150

Video Game Pocket Review Chat

Sonic Rob: oh, I started playing GTA4 with the Baker last night
Sonic Rob: we played for 2 hours or so
Sonic Rob: and by the end she was pretty disappointed
Sonic Rob: “you haven’t stolen any cars!”
Sonic Rob: “that’s ’cause I don’t want to get my ass beat by these vicious-ass cops!”
FyreHaar: it’s way less rampagey than GTAIII
FyreHaar: the cops are fucking everywhere!!
Sonic Rob: also, Nico surrenders if they so much as gently pat him on the head
Sonic Rob: the acting and story seem really good so far
Sonic Rob: although I’m glad I turned subtitles on before the Jamaican guy showed up
Sonic Rob: or I wouldn’t have had a fucking clue what he was saying

Film Century 1.5

Hell yeah, power movie weekend!

Nov. 4 The Professional – For all the blood and smoke, there’s something charmingly innocent about a tale of perfectly chaste love, no matter how many bullets are involved. 112/150
Nov. 6 (Untitled) – A well-deserved blowtorch up the ass to self-obsessed artists and the assholes that enable them. 113/150
Nov. 7 Nerdcore Rising – Shockingly honest and instrospective at times for a documentary about novelty music. 114/150
Nov. 7 Franklyn – What do you bet people will still whip out the tired old gambit of calling this director “visionary” even when his vision consists mostly of other people’s movies? 115/150
Nov. 8 Resident Evil – 100 minutes of stuff that isn’t fucking Resident Evil! 116/150
Nov. 9 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – Too goddamned much of a good thing, like being forced to eat a gallon of ice cream at gunpoint. 117/150

Fatherland – Cannonball Read #1

Fatherland by Thomas Harris. Alternate History, Mystery.

I love alternate history novels. Give me some Turtledove any day of the week and I’ll eat it up. So the premise of this novel was extremely attractive. Germany effectively won WWII and has Europe on a leash. The US is led by President Joe Kennedy. There is a guerilla war in the east against what is left of the Soviet Union. Continue reading Fatherland – Cannonball Read #1

Film Century 1.5

Oct. 4 How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – ((Ugly Betty + The Office) – all ethnic minorities)/Mean Girls = yeahhhhhhhhhhh. 101/150
Oct. 11 Gangs of New York – Hey, remember when everyone else was so completely oppressed that white people had to take out their racist insecurities against each other? 102/150
Oct. 16 A Serious Man – Having already reworked the Odyssey as a quirky nugget of Americana, the Coen brothers decidede to really mix it up and rework the Book of Job as a quirky nugget of Americana. 103/150
Oct. 18 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – A sort of comedy thriller, the movie changes a lot once you’ve seen it once and the shock value has worn off. 104/150
Oct. 18 Sleepy Hollow – Perhaps not the Burtoniest Burtoning ever Burtoned, but just Burtony enough, and no bad thing for it. 105/150

Film Century 1.5 – 100th Film Gala Extravaganza!

Eh, I got nothin’.

Sep. 25 Surrogates – With the help of a poor man’s Jack Black and that creepy face-smoothing technology they used on Patrick Stewart in X-Men 2, Bruce Willis will murder the Internet to save his family! 97/150
Sep. 26 Whip It – Sports Movie XVII: You’re A Big Fat Pedophile, Rob. 98/150
Sep. 29 Paris – Something between fragmented and shattered. 99/150
Oct. 2 Zombieland – God bless Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg for inventing the single best genre of films ever conceived. 100/150

Film Century 1.5

PAX took a big chunk out of my schedule, but we’re getting near the century mark nonethless.

Aug. 29 The Hurt Locker – The scariest, most tense war film I’ve seen since Aliens. 89/150
Aug. 30 Thirst – Refreshingly hard to classify – drama? black comedy? vampire movie? romance? – but occasionally gets a bit sillier than it thinks it is. 90/150
Sep. 9 The Fog of War – Is asking to be understood the same thing as asking forgiveness? 91/150
Sep. 11 Ponyo – Hayao Miyazaki is the modern master of trippy-ass acid flashback cartoons. 92/150
Sep. 12 9 – If this isn’t the first steampunk movie, it’s certainly the finest I’ve yet seen. 93/150
Sep. 12 Harakiri – Dear Mr. Tarantino: This is how you make a time-bending revenge flick. 94/150
Sep. 18 The Informant! – The most compelling angle of this story – the question of what it means that someone so greedy, arrogant, egocentric, pathologically dishonest, scatterbrained and ultimately insane got so far in American industry – goes completely unexplored in this film. 95/150
Sep. 21 Bright Star – Victorian period dramas are the 12-bar blues of filmmaking; it’s all the same bits, but the little touches make all the difference. 96/150